Riot police clashing with demonstrators in Belgrade and other cities have defined Serbia’s turbulent summer. What began last November as a product of anger over corruption and collapsing infrastructure has become a broader protest movement against Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić’s rule. Students are demanding free elections and accountability, but the government has responded with riot police, arrests, and counter-rallies.
Vučić has led this Balkan country for more than a decade. Throughout his rule, he has consolidated power through pressure on the media, politicizing the courts, and mobilizing state resources for his party. Elections are still held, but international monitors document widespread irregularities, from pressure on state employees to heavy pro-government media coverage. Opposition leaders argue that they cannot compete on anything close to a level playing field.
But this story is not only about Belgrade; it is about Europe itself. More specifically, the European Union’s practice of putting short-term stability over principles, even when that stability soon unravels. Serbia is part of a broader pattern in which the divided and risk-averse EU lacks a clear strategy for dealing with its neighborhood.
Despite Vučić’s crackdown, the EU has hardly changed how it deals with Serbia. Brussels has tolerated Belgrade’s slide into illiberalism while continuing to treat Vučić as a partner. The EU still frames Serbia as a candidate state for membership in the political union, signs new cooperation deals with Brussels, and extends financial pledges. It does so even as analysts warn of democratic decline, police target demonstrators, and government-affiliated thugs attack protesters. This policy has thus fostered a sense of impunity in which Vučić believes he can monopolize power at home and maintain strategic ambiguity abroad: playing Moscow and Beijing against the Europeans while still counting on Brussels to keep the door open.
Underlining as much, Vučić bowed to Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing this week. He also regularly rubs shoulders with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Belgrade extended its cheap-gas lifeline with Gazprom into 2025 and is negotiating a longer deal, has bought Chinese air-defense systems, and signed a free-trade pact with Beijing. This summer, Serbia conducted joint military drills with the Chinese military.
In Brussels, some strategists might call the soft approach to Belgrade “pragmatic,” pointing to Serbia’s fractured opposition. Some say that the opposition is too weak and divided to challenge Vučić. That weakness has allowed him to present himself as the only reliable actor in Serbian politics. Yet, by indulging Vučić, Brussels has fed the hand that bites it, stripping itself of leverage, emboldening his government, and helping him entrench his power at home.
Vučić knows how to keep Europe invested. He repeatedly dangles the promise of progress on Kosovo, referencing Serbia’s long-standing dispute with its former province. Vučić has made promises but has not kept them. In response, European leaders have issued carefully worded statements but stopped short of imposing real costs.
RFK JR. GRILLED BY REPUBLICANS OVER COVID-19 VACCINES IN HEATED HEARING
From Georgia to Hungary, Turkey to Serbia, leaders have learned that a few token reforms and vague promises will keep the EU happily engaged. For the EU, the image of riot police attacking protesters in Belgrade is a reminder of its failure: an inability to halt democratic erosion in Serbia and its embrace of Moscow and Beijing.
The protests may be a Serbian story, but the inability to act is a European one.
